More About our Arrival (February 8, 2008)

Anusha and I (Jill) are spending the week in Katmandu readjusting our sleep schedules and settling into life in Nepal. We’re staying with Anuraj’s youngest sister, her husband and their 3 and 6 year old sons. Anusha had a fever the first night here and visited her first Nepali hospital/clinic on her first full day in Nepal. What a lucky girl. Apparently she caught some sort of virus either before we left or on our way over. It’s almost run its course, but between that and the time change, I’m enjoying her longer naps (and some of my own!).

Because Anusha was sick, we delayed traveling to Nepalgunj for a week, so Anusha only got to see Anuraj for a day. She spent those hours searching for and cuddling with her papa. It turns out she did miss him! (I had my doubts because she seemed fairly disinterested whenever he called or was on the web cam.) This makes me more sensitive to the fact that this is probably a hard adjustment for her being away from her Nani (grandmother) Landis, who she has gotten very close to the past few months (and who has a knack for making her laugh). She has started saying “ah-ni-ni” which I’ll attribute to Nani!

For all those who were praying for my journey, thank you. I mentioned in the last post that I stood in the immigration line in India for over an hour 1:00 a.m. Indian time. It turns out we didn’t need to go through immigration since we were in transit (which I figured but some Air France person told me I needed to!). The nice immigration lady admired Anusha (who heartily cooperated by offering her sweet smile) and told me to “wait over there” for my airline people. A few minutes later all the immigration people had cleared out . . . I asked someone else what to do who said to “wait here.” And about ten minutes and a few prayers later someone asked me what I was waiting for! The whole time I kept thinking, “Okay, trust this…” hoping that there was a reason for it all. The Jet Airways attendant was called and came and said the airline would take care everything -- of all my luggage stuff (which all arrived in Katmandu, thank goodness!) and promptly led me to one of the private airline lounges. I am so glad because when I got down to our gate, I was surprised to find a very large, cold and stinky room with lots of men! Had we spent 8 hours there, I don’t know what we would have done! So, thank goodness for the immigration mess up. And for a little experiment in trusting!